Author: whatstationsteach.org

The white dotted line is the first train tunnels under the Hudson River. They took just two years to plan. Construction started earnestly in 1905 using primitive methods. They were innovated and the world’s longest underwater tunnels were made by a determined Pennsylvania Railroad by 1910. They whisked thrilled customers on new electric trains into the world’s grandest station. They set the standard for the key transport mode for the first half of the 20th Century. It cemented New York as America’s premier Transit Metropolis.

Today, that epoch-making success has deteriorated, along with the tunnels, into a telling metaphor for our failures to govern transportation. If we are serious about replacing the tunnels, we have to replace the agencies that created today’s crisis. This preview sketches how preventing an emergency in America’s key train tunnel may well be the crisis we need to start transforming how every American metro manages its mobility in the new era.

A Quick History Of What Cities Get When No Body Is In Charge Of No Policy

If New York only builds a new tunnel and its connecting infrastructure (now known as the Gateway), the symptoms of system deterioration will repeat themselves somewhere else. The Port Authority has two other sets of tunnels over 100 years old. Similarly aged are two sets on the East River. Manhattan is surrounded by connections reaching the end of their lives. Let’s see why so many replacements have been put off for so long; endangering so much.

In 1995, warnings that the Hudson Tunnels’ were reaching the end of life prompted plans for replacements. Fifteen years later the ARC project (Access to the Region’s Core) started construction and quickly was killed by New Jersey’s Governor under the pretext of not sharing cost overruns.

With borderline belligerence between neighboring states, federal intervention led by Obama’s Secretary of Transportation mediated a deal by 2015 that advanced the Gateway project (Above, the sagging orange dotted line are the replacement tunnels; but the Gateway includes 11 miles of rail infrastructure from Newark to Queens, centered by the Moynihan extension of Penn Station.) The recurring political dysfunction took a destructive turn when the current Executive reneged on the 2015 deal. This voided the Tunnels’ hoped-for 2026 completion.

Despite heightened anxiety over no body being likely to restore this vital artery, Congress’ response has been to try sneaking money into the Gateway to avoid the President’s veto.

This Bloomberg article highlights the grave economic consequences for the region and nation in what is appearing to emerge as a path to catastrophic self-inflicted wounds. The graphic below shows congestion’s negative multiplier of the most likely scenario of one tunnel failing.

Two decades of turf-fighting has turned a routine infrastructure replacement into an unacceptable high risk of emergency. (If you want a refresher on pre-Trump political dysfunction, spend 15 minutes reading the middle of this 2016 article.)

Remember, all this drama is for an aged tunnel that would have been replaced long ago if it carried autos.

A way out might emerge from my working cut-to-the-chase analysis: multi-state mis-governance caused this threat to the nation’s economic heart. If we learn from democracies with train policies, their regions modernize mobility far faster because the national rail has proper authority to aid commuter rail. With new U.S. policies using the force of federal law, neither Governors nor Presidents can capriciously void them repeatedly as with these Tunnels. Formed in the 1970s as a caretaker, Amtrak is weak and never reformed. This allows executive caprice to rule. Worse, it creates a void where progress is more difficult and costly than other global cities face since they have national policies that convey proper authority to national rails. And they have even reformed recently to improve efficiencies.

Our reality is that today’s increasing dysfunction is unlikely to be resolved before one tunnel fails and causes an emergency. The cure is for a national rail policy in which metro rail is promoted by the inter-city rail authority. At this moment, that seems like a ridiculous long haul. But…….

As recent as 18 months ago, it was just assumed the tunnels would be built by existing agencies. This is not a responsible assumption today. This became evident; prompted by two trends. Fortunately, both now make agency overhaul possible.

First, divisive politics have forced metros to reorder authority… if congestion and costs are to be reduced. The current Executive’s sabotage of a deal that took five precious years to negotiate should be seen for what it really did: preserve a regime in which state and federal policies restrict metros from using trains to stimulate growth and mobility alternatives. Note that the Gateway project already was a major retreat from the historic federal contribution of 75% capital. The Obama deal had only 50% federal capital. Trump merely wanted to reduce it further. Transcend Trump and we see Uncle Sam will not recapitalize transit to the required levels. More than ever, metros are on their own and must devise new methods.

Into that void must move the next Congress and the next Executive to start writing a new social contract with taxpayers and commuters in which metropolitan transportation is controlled democratically by the region… with the states and feds as lesser players and payers. I sketch this “new deal” later in this preview and, of course, will detail it in the chapter due in 2019.

Second trend…. Proposals to overhaul transportation agencies are emerging from New York’s civic groups. Since this will have more of a lasting impact than the Trump catalyst, the chapter will spend considerable space analyzing proposals. Here is some context for why a bold strategy for metros to rebalance authority may have an opening.

Four years ago when posting my Penn Station piece in Aaron Renn’s “The Urbanophile,” my series had concluded that proper updating of central stations required reforming transit agencies. But, I was on the fringe. Later that year, the Eno Center (transportation’s established trainer and think tank) collaborated with the upstart Transit Center to publish “Getting To The Route Of It.” Subtitled “The Role of Governance In Regional Transit, ” the study analyzed six of the largest U.S. metros; looking hardest at New York, but the study also was critical of my metropolis, Chicagoland.

That study changed the discussion so today’s crisis can be productive. Over the last three years, the damage to the Tunnels became more widely known. Precipitous decline — including New York’s 2017 transit summer in hell — pushed the civic establishment into calling for agency overhaul. But, New York civic leaders need time to work through proposals with the political powers-that-be. Do they have time? Nor will foresight grace decisions made during an emergency triggered by closing one tunnel for repairs.

New York’s Vision is epoch-making again, at least by U.S. standards. New York’s civic leaders know they must overhaul agencies and this shows best in the RPA’s “4th Regional Plan.” Its wholistic approach to urban challenges focuses on reinvesting in its key asset, transit. For that, the “ 4th Plan” proposes four institutional changes for transportation: convert the Port Authority into an investment bank; rationalize road tolls; combine the three commuter rails into a regional network, called T-Rex; and form a public benefit corporation to update subways economically.

Supporting this “4th Plan,” RPA just published an 86-page booklet detailing its T-Rex proposal (cover is above). It is comprehensive and candid. Criticisms can be made of it. (Let’s understate the antagonism and say that New Yorkers, justifiably, have famously profound relationships with transit… but I found this series of articles by Alon Levy to inform best.) Through the early haze, we should recognize RPA is pioneering the technical work to make its metro’s trains competitive with other global centers.

But, New York’s political reality must change before serious hope can be mustered that the T-Rex Plan actually will improve commuting. For that cause, it also helps to remind ourselves that other global centers achieve this by conveying sufficient authority to agencies. By that key standard, T-Rex’s politics look pre-historic… or at least pre-New Deal. Only one of the booklet’s 86 pages discusses funding and governance. While that page suggests contemporary techniques (value capture, 3Ps, user fees), these will have minimal application as long as authority is held by byzantine bureaucracies.

The T-Rex booklet is a consensus tool so discussions lead to reforms. But the road to sufficient reform is not passable given this metro’s institutional politics require both state governments to agree. Then, both must prioritize transit. (This is more unlikely given other statewide priorities and, currently, very limited discretionary spending. Plus, New Jersey is closer to insolvency.)

The only positive to promote overhaul is the extraordinary cost of transit. States should be glad to give that cost and headaches to a true metropolitan authority. But despite this common sense, the bears still clutch their honey-pot. Who will pry it away?

As for my current situational summary….. The states of New Jersey and New York no longer should be higher authorities; based on their poor performance and the need for future accountability to the region’s taxpayers. As powerful as New York’s civic movement is, only federal leverage for the Tunnels sets in motion the required overhaul of state-controlled agencies.

History Lesson: Only two higher authorities can make a way out of no way.

First, God must grace Manhattan with enough time to replace the Tunnels. Even if Providence (or luck) intervenes, this fact remains: Man’s agencies have created extraordinary and unnecessary risks… and they will do so again. Specifically, the East River tunnels are also at the end of their lives. And so is most infrastructure surrounding Manhattan; making a moat of the nation’s central business district.

The second higher authority is Uncle Sam. Constitutionally obligated to promote commerce between states, NY/NJ’s chances in Congress improve by stretching this assistance to all metros. Emergency action for the Gateway starts setting the legal frame for regional transportation by applying the prototype appropriately along the NEC’s metros and extending that to solve the Midwest’s multi-state mess around Chicago.

If Plan A was the 2015 Obama Administration hand-shake that was so vulnerable to sabotage, Plan B declares the Hudson crossing a vital piece of national infrastructure for the NEC and the nation’s commercial center. To protect both, an Emergency Task Force (ETF) using federal authority manages the crossing’s update. This ETF also is charged with prototyping modern regional rail by tying together these three goals outlined here and detailed in the fuller study.

1. Build new tunnels, fix the old ones and update the remaining Gateway infrastructure; making sure Penn Station updates can evolve efficiently into a through-station serving a through-network. (Of the many Penn proposals, a practical summary runs from pages 22 to 25 of RPA’s 2017 comprehensive booklet “Crossing The Hudson.”)

2. Take the next step. Prevent a similar emergency across the East River by structuring investments that maximize capacity of a through-network. So the ETF’s job is to help organize a tri-state transportation agency whose Board has clean elections. The Board has routine accountability for taxes and user fees.

3. Utilize private sector partnerships to get the most value for passengers and taxpayers alike.

Transportation’s New Deal: Legal and political arguments sketched and stretched.

Let’s paint a Big Picture: we are in the process of shaping a new order for transit. Cited by me early in the Introduction as a framework for this website’s strategy, the premise of “The Metropolitan Revolution” is upheld in case studies of “The New Localism.” (Brookings Institution Press released both books three years apart and both share Bruce Katz as co-author.) This sequel looks closer at how we transfer power from states and the feds to localities and metros. The book implies a corollary realignment in which we redefine each level’s role and, thus, smooth-out difficult transfers. “The New Localism” acknowledges that transportation infrastructure is a laggard in the realignment already taking place in other public services.

To evolve transportation into the new order, ARC and the Gateway are central to understanding the new federal role. ARC mostly was three regional agencies hoping to solve problems. With federal power as a bit player, the ARC could not withstand its 2010 capital crisis. Learning there must be a higher authority to make it through a crisis, the feds led the Gateway. Despite Trump’s sabotage, Amtrak is the funding channel that keeps the Gateway alive.

But to prevent the catastrophe of one tunnel closing, the federal role gets redefined further with a takeover of the Tunnel (again, justified as infrastructure of national importance) and includes the entire Gateway project. To prevent future calamities, the federal task force then assists in forming a representative metropolitan government.

The theory of a metro/local revolution sounds like it might work for transportation except for this: New York and every metro must contend with this historic joke, “all you have to do is get an Act Of Congress.” This has been a bad joke for probably all of this Century. But fortunately for metro transportation, the joke has been replaced by the reality of today’s crunch time.

When tunnel-failure is in the hands of God, Man’s misplaced authority has reached its tipping point. The game-changing conclusion is that states should not restrict metros from governing their transportation. An authority realignment strategy is equally simple: instead of letting Congress retreat from funding responsibilities, it first must agree to re-allign metro transportation so it can be more self-sufficient. We should expect lawmakers to start as early as 2019…no matter who is in the White House… or how un-civil Washington has become.

With a recent record that invites intervention, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is an interstate compact authorized by a federal Charter in 1921. The PA coordinates the Gateway Development Corporation responsible for the Tunnels, Penn Station and infrastructure along an eleven mile route. Congress should revoke this part of the PA’s Charter, setup an Emergency Task Force (ETF) and also remake laws so the ETF can innovate public-private partnerships and apply those efficiencies. Specifically, let’s also test how the ETF can avoid unnecessary red-tape and stabilize funding to complete the project before a tunnel has to be closed.

With Governor Cuomo Declaring A Transit Emergency, Commuter Rail Should Follow Suit … Before It Is Too Late… And Too Costly

Avoiding the Tunnel’s crisis-to-emergency has a helpful analogy. Governor Cuomo put the MTA under a state of emergency in July 2017. The response has been sweeping, at least judging intent in the “Plan To Modernize New York City Transit” (cover above) released in May 2018. To adapt these actions to the PA, both governors must declare an emergency for the Tunnels. But, the realignment to a metro government that is required to modernize regional rail must be pushed by Congress. Let’s consider coining that campaign as “Modernizing By Metro-izing.”

Regardless …… Lawmaking is the lever. Let’s think of this as a formula explored in the forthcoming chapter: Congress’ deal is it provides less capital, but metros get more clout.

Despite the imminent Hudson emergency, we must prepare for challenges. Legal challenges, of course, can be preempted partially by effective political arguments.

The primary popular lever is “no taxation without representation.” Taxes are essential to any ambitious re-build of infrastructure. The key factor in Denver’s impressive build-out is its transit district has an elected board. Revisit the end of my preview on how mid-sized metros changed and adapt that success to New York’s tri-state metro. A modernization managed by an elected Board whose campaigns are non-partisan and actually discuss clearly how tax dollars are invested. Ask the taxpayers who have to fund the deferred costs of bringing our systems to a “state of good repair.” That starts a good Deal.

The second political level argues taxpayers at all levels must receive value. Since the federal government is already lending most the money for the two states’ contribution to the new tunnels, then Congress also needs to protect federal taxpayers so they get their money back. And the best way to insure that Uncle Sam gets his money back is to encourage a metropolitan government that can adjust taxes and user fees much more effectively than states can whose priorities are to feed existing programs. Setting up a metropolitan government with powers to deliver economically should be the corollary to the U.S. lending more money.

The protecting-the-taxpayer lever is supported by news stories of runaway costs, probably the easiest-understood need for agency overhaul. Yet, a federal ETF also needs to reinvent how to maximize return to taxpayers and private partners. While the RPA’s “4th Plan” proposes solutions, U.S. criteria for financing is more likely to persuade states to realign power.

Both political levers make it possible for emergency powers to plan a through-network that is turned over to a new metropolitan body. But the stretch is necessary since the NEC uses the same pieces of infrastructure as commuter trains.

For example, my literature review analyzing the Gateway’s Moynihan Station concludes most independent observers do not think this is a good use of taxes. Moynihan/Penn remains a terminal when a through-station is the best investment to expand capacity. So, new federal lending standards must establish metro governance that modernizes outdated terminals.

To stretch from emergency to sustained progress, Congress must empower a metro’s public to hold new agencies accountable. Consider overhauling Metropolitan Planning Organizations, creatures of the feds intended to spend taxes effectively within a regional plan. New York’s tri-state MPO collapsed in 1982 and the U.S. made scant effort to enforce its intent. Now, it can.

Other enabling legislation could be considered within Amtrak reform (Amtrak owns the Tunnels and Penn Station.) While today’s bitter debates reduce our chances of effective solutions, let’s hold up the model of the German national railroad as the enabler of regional rail modernization.

The policy entry point to seize control of the Gateway and get it rebuilt is still unclear. Yet intent is clear: the U.S. simply cannot reduce its capital funding and leave regions powerless to raise cash. The new deal’s policy principle is that U.S. empowers regions to solve their problems.

Other policy threads can be woven to broaden this deal’s coalition. Trains are underutilized to stimulate redevelopment equitably (a section in RPA’s “4th Plan”.) Regional authority can use trains to correct disparities between Manhattan and the former industrial and underutilized lands of Brooklyn, Queens and New Jersey. Trains tie these disparities into a whole in the T-Rex (map below.) Follow its new through-route tunnel from Brooklyn’s Atlantic Terminal through Wall Street and Mid-town and on to still-struggling Newark. Trains connecting Wall Street to poor neighborhoods is a metaphor and tool for those who want to highlight equitable redevelopment as part of the metropolitan new deal.

Conclusion and Prelude: Organize Regional Authority To Tunnel and Through-Route

If the Tunnels crisis uses federal authority to help civic leaders remake their legal and political framework in New York, then other American metros have a better chance to find their particular path to reorder power and modernize into regional rail.

While RPA’s proposals are getting to the root, they have not really asked states to share more power with the metro. To a large degree, that is Uncle Sam’s job. In reducing the reign of ineffective state bureaucracies, the U.S. also can mitigate how states failed to resolve city-suburb tensions. Captive to suburbs, state rail agencies did not modernize.

Let’s think of Uncle Sam’s intervention as the liberation of the New York metro’s residents who — trapped by their state governments — had become inured to the condition of their transit. Indeed a majority of NYC residents use transit daily (see the first table of 15 largest U.S. cities.)

On a percentage basis (and playfully to shift to rivalries), NYC has over twice as many passengers as my city, The Second City. While still backward by European standards, Chicago recently updated its “L” (heavy rail) at a rate far faster than far-richer New York. And Chicago did this despite Illinois being broke, endlessly corrupted and even having a constitutional bias against Chicago. On a relative basis as the globe’s center, Manhattan has few true excuses for how its agency neglect brought transit so far below the standard of global cities.

On the other hand, Chicagoland has better excuses: having the one broken state of Illinois has caused more rail deterioration than trying to coordinate three states. Minimizing Illinois control is the key element in the preview of Chicago Union Station (CUS); due to be posted in late June. Below is CUS’ Quiz question. (The Quiz is the most entertaining part of this site.) Take the Quiz and click on any fantasy rendering to read the Answers, short write-ups for why each central station is restricted by its states, including Manhattan’s Penn.

Courtesy of WikiCommons, this 1908 postcard of the seemingly immutable South Station also shows the Atlantic Elevated (running up the right side) that connected South and North Stations in a Bostonian roundabout way… until it was torn down in 1938.

In the 80 years since, Boston has talked about reconnecting these terminals. But all the talk has not improved the awkward and inefficient transfers that still inconvenience both today’s Amtrak customers and commuters of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. (MBTA is an agency of MassDOT; both controlled by the Governor.)

The consequences of not integrating the two central stations are many and show how badly transportation is governed… in even a good government state.

In the Big Picture, poor connections hamper train service to the three northern New England states (Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont); isolating them ‘de facto’ from transportation alternatives. A modern federal standard should require the efficiencies of through-service.

Of more immediate concern, MBTA commuter rail ridership peaked in 2006 at 141,000 weekday trips and has dropped about 10% … despite the region growing about 8%. With those numbers going in opposite directions instead of rising together, road congestion worsened. Couple that with urban transit at peak hours continuing to over-crowd. Transit is a less attractive option when it should be more of an alternative to counter the costs of car commuting.

Despite the state’s knowledge of all this, it seems powerless to stop this negative multiplier effect; in part because its policies are biased to cars. For example, it has built several tunnels to bring cars downtown; the last major one being the notorious Big Dig. Yet, a tunnel to unite two train systems into one network has been an obvious solution for decades. Under current law, Massachusetts is responsible for ignoring the obvious. New laws must rebalance authority so transportation progresses.

With persistence from former Governor Michael Dukakis, a civic coalition organized to support this new tunnel. Their case for how the tunnel can unify the system is made on their website. (Offering a comprehensive solution and using examples of game-changing tunnels made by America’s economic competitors, this website is a model for other civic groups seeking solutions.) Despite the economic and social benefits for this North-South Rail Link, the NSRL faces delays (mostly from the state), added costs and possible interference from MassDOT’s intent to use a nearby postal facility to expand South Station. In my view, NSRL is the strategic accelerant… perhaps a multiplier for train modernization in New England.

Yet, the state has not committed to modernizing its trains; whether it is hybrid electrification or even uniform boarding platforms. A solid modernization is proposed by Transit Matters’ excellent study Regional Rail for Metropolitan Boston. (Boston is the only metro I know of that has two civic groups producing high-quality transit proposals.) Read the report’s details. But, the key issue is that state dithering raises the price to taxpayers for all aspects of modernization.

Worse is how state dithering reduces revenue. MassDOT’s unclear policy dampened a decade of serious plans to build above Boston’s three main stations (South, North and Back Bay) using their air rights. Other significant property tax revenue (which could help fund the train tunnel) is lost because state support for a through-route is not reliable. Failing to modernize and unite the two systems suppresses property value growth near main stations because nearby buildings are less convenient for shoppers and employees. There is a similar suppression around the metro’s other larger stations.

Chapter 9 details how even a competent state DOT cannot make a tunnel a mere 1.6 miles long despite the multiple benefits of uniting the two systems, improving commuter options and unleashing transit’s support for property redevelopment. By keeping trains constrained within 19th Century terminals, trains cannot contribute to other social solutions; such as TOD land use patterns to help reduce Boston’s shortage of affordable housing.

While the region needs to innovate its governance, the related core obstacle of a new deal to modernize is the difficult dynamic created by Boston transit users. When their service goes bad, the colorful complaints have few rivals across the nation. When Massachusetts finally tries to improve service with a fare increase, complaints escalate. With no one liking the old deal, the cobbled condition of Boston transit resists real solutions.

However, we need to recognize that colorful complaints are really a reaction to too-tight state control of transit agencies. It is time for Massachusetts to loosen its grip.

To start resolving such a state of distrust, perhaps we actually can make something of Trump’s infrastructure proposal. Ideological and possibly designed to postpone solving commuter problems, Trump’s proposal would make states pay way more than they ever could. But, Trump really only accelerates a trend for much of this century. In laying bare the real decline in federal funding, Trump actually creates opportunities for overhauling how we govern transportation. Since Boston has such high land values and can afford the capital costs required of better transit, they should propose an alternative deal in which the metro pays for more but also gets the authority to modernize transit.

But no body wants to pay for transit under the current regime. So, consider offering taxpayers a new deal that goes something like this: if the metro were given taxing and usage fee authority to raise money and improve transportation, then Massachusetts would not have to pay the 70-80% as Trump proposed… or not even the 30% it probably pays today. In structuring this deal correctly, the state in theory could pay as little 0% eventually.

But for this to ever happen, the state must give up authority so the metro can solve problems. To do its job, the agency needs Uncle Sam’s authority and bonding to organize private partners.

In this new deal, there must be a believable promise to taxpayers that a rail tunnel connecting North and South Stations won’t end up ridiculously over-budget and poor quality …. as was Boston’s Big Dig (which, evidently, is still stuck in the civic craw.) In brief, a NSRL-like tunnel and other supporting train upgrades really need a civic campaign that promises a new deal selling the benefits of a true transit alternative to cars… and, more important, an agency that can deliver. Only then can Boston break its cycle of colorful complaint.

That deal is only believable from an elected, accountable regional agency. More of its details are developed in the chapter.

Moving U.S. Forward. The rationale for Uncle Sam helping the Boston and DC/Baltimore metros is clear: their through-tunnels are infrastructure of strategic federal importance. Better yet, these tunnels test methods to overcome two fundamental flaws in federal domestic policy.

The first is a federal failure to prototype. There are too many examples of Congress passing laws and requiring all cities to follow them before we even have results to know if it is a good law that the next generation can afford. Pick your example of policy: public housing, interstate radials encouraging sprawl and segregation of uses. All created multi-decade mistakes; avoidable if policy had been prototyped so consequences could be known and adapted for.

The second policy failure is when Congress dumps responsibilities on states and they are the wrong size to solve local problems. With the feds wiggling out of their traditional 80% capital costs and Trump whittling the wiggle radically further, states — increasingly insolvent — have their largest incentive in history to right-size transportation authority to metros. This evolution needs a bump from U.S. law and funding incentives. This includes structuring a new deal of accountability to local taxpayers and commuters who will pay the new costs.

In a more specific vein, the multi-state metros such as DC and New York City have a stronger rationale for the force of federal law; particularly after the U.S. starts declaring these key stations, their tracks and tunnels to be “infrastructure of immediate national significance.”

Focussing federal power should end the repeated false starts and different levels of government sabotaging something as fundamental as replacing the Hudson Tunnel that connects the world’s largest financial center to the rest of the country. This initial federal rationale also includes national security: such as modernizing and protecting the tunnel that runs through the Capitol grounds to Virginia.

In our toxic and irrational politics, we will need to mollify advocates of states rights currently ruling the roost. But what shapes a deal over the next decade is to let states off the hook for funding the impossible burden proposed in the Trump plans.

Since the 1980s, the federal trend of sticking states with obligations they cannot afford nor solve is a lose-lose for everyone. With many states in imminent insolvency, we have a chance to restructure transportation so each metro can raise the funds it needs to solve its congestion.

Uncle Sam reducing his share of funding (the carrot.) In return, an effective deal must give the force of enough federal law (the stick) so each metro can raise missing capital and to modernize the service for commuters so taxpayers get value and private operators at least come out whole. For that, a metro agency must increase operating revenue by rebalancing the economic choices between cars and transit.

This Preview just outlined the differences in solutions for Boston, Baltimore and DC. Details in their chapters use Uncle Sam to smooth the required power transfer from states to metros. The New York metro has similar problems, but needs its own Preview to explain its slightly more complicated deal… which includes using the President’s Bully Pulpit to achieve progress.

Late April’s Preview: The Politics of Drawing Lines. The map above is a collaboration synthesized by two top American experts in regional rail. In 2009, Alon Levy wrote two articles for “The Transport Politic.” This schematic brings synergy to three separate rail systems. Consider this as New York’s multiplier for train modernization. Despite current law forbidding such economic logic, drawing two simple through-routes, theoretically, helps prepare Big Apple trains for the 21st Century. Pivotal.

One through-route tunnels from Grand Central Terminal to Penn Station (10 blocks.) Its capacity-building potential has been well-known for this century.

The second line connects Atlantic Terminal and Hoboken with a stop at the Fulton subway hub in the financial district. (Admittedly, this inter-modal multiplier is longer, a six mile tunnel.) But, NYC must relieve peak hour stress on its aged subway. Through-routed commuter trains remain the most effective solution to this metro’s particular geographic — and political — transportation challenges.

Those who run the metro’s tri-state byzantine transit agencies never got the above memo, or independent expert thinking or even the drawing. Or at least, they never considered these solutions seriously; particularly since there were tensions (typically derived from national ambitions) between the Governors to whom these Authorities owe their jobs. Nor in the nine years since the lines were drawn could these divergent Boards start integrating three large systems. While this misalignment of authorities prevents efficient solutions, even current service is threatened increasingly by crisis.

That crisis now looms close with Trump’s intent to block the update of the Hudson Tunnels by reducing the USDOT’s 50% contribution. This 50% was a deal made by a previous Congress and Administration. Already stressed at 25% each, New York and New Jersey must think outside the box that policy has trapped them.

In this context of dysfunction and broken deals, the NYC Preview (due to post in late April) explores how this mega-metro can restructure its affairs so politicians do not sink, yet, a fourth plan in sixteen years to replace these Tunnels. Protecting the nation’s financial center from a transportation catastrophe must start now. Even if USDOT were to honor their 50% commitment (and the courts probably will force this), the Tunnels would not be replaced until 2026 at the earliest. Since there were three Nor’easters this past March, each one that hits the Hudson increases the chances this new tunnel would not be completed before the aged 1908 inheritance becomes unusable.

Uncle Sam will come to the rescue; but not with a moneybag to fill the gap. Rather, we must evolve a federal intent to shape 21st Century metropolitan policy of which transportation is key.

The Final Preview: Overcoming The Weak State. Chicagoland is blessed: it doesn’t even need a tunnel to connect its two adjacent terminals to start developing a higher capacity commuter through-network. Amtrak already through-runs on the edge of the Chicago River. Its two tracks merely need to be doubled and shared with commuters.

But such blessed simplicity is also damned by Illinois being flat-broke and piling-up two decades of deferred maintenance; including rail-cars built in the 1970s. Far worse, ten commuter lines are not electrified; ignoring global standards. Such neglect, not surprisingly, diffuses the key goal of using trains as an economic multiplier. Chicagoland labors inefficiently while new taxes go to pay past bills instead of investing in the future. Damned.

As salvation, this metro may be the most ripe for a new deal with its solitary state. This chapter proposes a deal that Illinois cannot refuse; given its debilitating chronic fiscal mismanagement.

Concluding Moving Forward. These last two previews will describe the nation’s two worst stations and why they only can be updated to a global standard if Uncle Sam is a true partner in re-delegating state transportation authority to the metropolis. For these and most legacy systems, it is at the metro level where policy can develop the land use subtleties required to reduce road congestion and household mobility costs. These are two key rationales for government moving us toward more sustainable transportation policies. Let’s get the prototypes right.

Rendering courtesy of Akridge Development, owner of air rights over the 1909 platforms. The green roofs compose DC’s proposed mini-city, Burnham Place. As fantastic as it looks, it cannot be built. First, the platforms below must be updated. But, there is no funding nor the political will to update to a global standard, despite the Capitol sitting one block away.

Washington DC, Baltimore and Boston have central stations that need a simple tunnel before trains can benefit each metro’s commuters as they should. While each metro talks about such a tunnel, none can dig one.

Why ?

Intuitively, we know why. Our trains and terminals operate much as when they entered bankruptcy in mid-century: under-invested, restrictive agencies, uneconomic transportation policies that support autos at the expense of developing alternatives for commuters.

After a quick analysis of how authority is in the wrong hands and often takes the wrong steps, this Preview proposes rearranging how we govern commuter trains so they stimulate growth around each central station and their network’s secondary stations so communities reap the benefits of transit more.

In the Big Picture solution, elected officials (and the people they appoint to transit agencies) might complete tunnels if they were held accountable to achieve a through-routed standard similar, let’s say, to that which benefits Europe. To create this needed discipline, this Preview of three chapters outlines a metropolitan body specialized to solve each region’s transportation problems; judiciously borrowing some tools from their partner, Uncle Sam.

Why is a metro authority necessary? The general answer is metro transportation rarely gets rationalized well by states; unless they are delegating that authority. (The previous Preview on California outlines the best progress.) In this century, the feds and some states are funding smaller shares of projects. We have just seen this trend’s big jump with Trump’s intent to make states fund shares they cannot afford. Clearer now than in 2017, authority must be rearranged if trains are even to keep the passengers they have. Real growth is unlikely.

The metropolis is the rational place for rearranged transportation authority if we expect trains to serve the public better and give an edge to economic growth. Outlined in this Preview, these three metros represent Uncle Sam’s best opportunity to help trains stimulate alternatives to auto commuting.

Symbols matter. For many reasons, the place to test and expand a metro regime is DC’s Union Station. (Hence, the station of the future is referred to as DCUS and the chapter will explain the strategy behind the abbreviation.) Instead of terminating two differing state systems as now, DCUS will center a redesigned network that serves one metro… much as the DC beltway was designed to rationalize vehicle traffic. Making the most of train assets also is pivotal to rationalizing the region and, indeed, making the Beltway work better.

But in today’s real world, the leverage of a productive asset won’t evolve because the station is broke. Despite having one of America’s most successful malls, Washington Union Station lacks funds for updates and, pitifully, stands hat-in-hand on the doorstep of an indifferent Congress and, now, a capricious Executive.

Congress is so negligent in delegating authority that the station’s concourse has devolved into a chronic peak hour congestion. More pressing for the region’s inner network, Metro is one of the nation’s most-stressed heavy rail systems. Expanding train service helps prevent Metro’s precipitous recent decline from recurring. Frequent through-service is a proven strategy to relieve the subways of Europe’s capitals, first Paris then Berlin and, recently, London.

But, help from trains has two obstacles. First, plans for a new concourse and platforms are un-funded. Second, the need to rebuild them first prevents the fantastic mini-city (rendered above) from being built and providing revenue via value capture.

Discussed in the DC chapter, stewards of public dollars also should update and expand the through-tracks to Virginia. A new through-route invests in a triple benefit of reducing concourse congestion, Metro stress and the region’s peak road traffic. Plus, it bolsters Homeland Security. Through-routing is not discussed seriously by agencies comprising the station’s Board.

For contrast, Paris achieved this innovation in the 1970s. Its trains grew into the region’s key alternative to the car, stimulated other options and focussed redevelopment around transit. Paris could do this because one body had authority. Berlin and London proved this again. It is a recipe for progress… and should be in the U.S.

The DC proposal can be adapted along the NEC. Let’s see at the next major stop.

Good States Struggle. To highlight how misaligned transit authority is, Maryland has one of the best DOTs. Yet, it cannot make a central station in downtown Baltimore. Contrary to common sense, Amtrak invested for three decades in rebuilding a station almost two miles from the heart of downtown. This also perpetuated the station’s approach; a tunnel opened in 1873 and the NEC’s second worst bottleneck. Both could be resolved with a central station downtown … if an agency was effective enough to dig a new tunnel through the downtown.

Smart States Struggle. Even the state with the brightest people cannot link its two terminals. Three governors have advocated a tunnel between Boston’s North Station and South Station. Despite trains being the best mode to relieve cobbled-together urban transit groaning under peak hour stress, MassDOT still killed a tunnel proposal a decade ago that even the USDOT wanted to study.

Overview Over. For the balance of this Part 1 (today) and all of Part 2 (tomorrow), I outline the case to rearrange authority so it works for these metros. To overcome chronic false starts in these three and other legacy cities, the federal government must partner with metropolitan agencies before they can modernize. A constitutional key is the federal authority to encourage inter-state commerce and apply it to multi-state metros. This power proves its legitimacy when it converts legacy terminals into through-networks which, in turn, stimulates commuting alternatives that generate more revenue and support regional redevelopment.

The policy proposals for these three metros contained in their respective three chapters will be posted in the Fall 2018. So, comment please now on their outlines. Thanks.

Preview of Chapter 7 on DC Union Station: How A Capitol Region Transportation Authority (CRTA) Can Symbolize Dysfunction Does Not Reign

My 2014 photo above has a gauze-like image from scaffolds installed so masons could fix the dome’s cracks. Metaphorical to me, some cracks represent how Congress avoids policies that will help diverse metros develop their commuting alternatives.

For example, serious cracks in transportation policy help explain why Union Station is broke. Contrasting to its 1990s success as an asset that stimulated one of urban America’s great renewal stories, Union Station never figured out how to finance its future. So despite its 2012 Master Plan being published with great hopes, it remains unfunded and congestion worsens.

Making the Station’s problems permanent, Trump’s plan pushes even more responsibility on fiscally unstable states. Since neither Virginia nor Maryland will adopt Washington’s Union Station, America’s best chance for transportation progress is an orphan. For those wanting reliable funding that advances transportation policy by decentralizing authority, the time is now and the place is DC.

Anyone hoping to lure the private sector into the hugely unprofitable business of moving commuters had better invent an authority to change entrenched commuting habits. For prospective private operators soon will learn they cannot succeed unless they work with an inventive agency that has the public’s support.

Will the region’s taxpayers step-up ? Only if new agencies are based on a new deal. Consider DCUS (the through-station) as the nation’s prototype.

First, let us briefly unravel how authority got misplaced. This chapter offers the cautionary tale from the 1980s deal that converted Union Station’s concourse into a hugely profitable mall. While saving the station from destruction, that deal shorted transit’s interest; given that mall deal set aside no money to update today’s inferior concourse. I also argue the station’s air rights were sold cheap; losing leverage to negotiate a win-win value capture scheme.

Showing its sincerity, Trump’s proposal ignores the obvious solution to reconstruct governance so regions can solve these transportation problems that states have neglected for decades. A first experiment to craft regional transportation policies starts with the federal District. This “CityLab” article contains a good summary of DC’s gridlock caused by underinvestment in Metro, the region’s increasing population and congestion and the lack of a political body to act on these inter-related problems. The station’s aged caretaker (Amtrak) is no shape to redevelop tracks and platforms so DCUS can center a through-network. If a new agency can run through-tracks, the mini-city vision (rendered at the top of this Preview) can become reality.

While Amtrak and the USDOT lack regional nuance, they still can channel federal authority to metros. For that, the DC chapter in “What Stations Teach” will propose a prototype. A Capitol Region Transportation Authority (CRTA) could update the platforms/concourse, help make the Burnham Place mini-city into a success and even make an electric through-route to Virginia. CRTA would be a symbol to the nation that these problems, typical of our larger commuter systems, can be solved by rearranging regional transportation so the metro’s citizens have the incentive to fund and change habits.

Lost in America’s ideological civil war, we forget Uncle Sam’s purpose is to make sure everything works together to provide the best public service at the best value to taxpayers. Today, that includes new metropolitan agencies that can attract private capital. So that common metro mistakes can be best resolved (and most central stations fit that description), a federal rationale emerges to share solutions and adapt them to a region’s specific needs.

That rationale gets expanded further in Baltimore where Amtrak’s 8th largest station is almost two miles from its downtown.

As a clue to the problem, Amtrak is making its fourth attempt to convert two floors of Baltimore Penn Station (BPS) into a hotel. Three earlier attempts failed, partly, for the obvious obstacle that BPS is inconvenient to downtown. Nor will an agency correct Amtrak’s mistake made two decades ago when it abandoned downtown Camden Station and, instead, invested in the off-central BPS. If you think I overstate, consider a more balanced view of Penn’s positioning.

Nothing can ever change that Penn Station sits two miles from downtown nor that Camden Station could be a superior transit hub; serving several large downtown office buildings, nearby Harborplace, several other tourist attractions, the Convention Center, many large hotels, two medical centers and two athletic stadiums… all of which bring tourist money into a city that desperately needs more. Yet, Amtrak persists to invest in BPS; despite only really serving two nearby educational institutions that do not attract much outside money.

While pedestrians are often the largest source of passengers entering central stations, BPS is borderline hostile. It is wedged between its tracks and surface lot on the north while a highway divides it from its south. Compounding isolation, eastern and western streets are wide, one-way and fast-moving. Besides three educational and cultural institutions, the half-mile ped-shed to BPS mostly has residential neighborhoods, on average, struggling to stabilize.

A true custodian of public assets — or a supervisor of private operators — should find money to tunnel so trains they serve downtown redevelopment. A pressing incentive to resolve this should be the 113 year-old tunnels that emerge on both sides of BPS. They constitute the NEC’s second worst bottleneck and are shared by freight and a commuter line, MARC. After two decades of studies, Amtrak’s preferred route for the new tunnel is within two blocks of the old.

In earlier studies, a tunnel to downtown was suggested by consultants as an alternative. It was eliminated. Further illustrating Amtrak’s inability to make progress, a private proposal for a DC-Baltimore high-speed line connects to Camden Station; avoiding BPS as a non-direct route that does not serve downtown passengers.

Maryland has one of the better state DOTs. But with secondary powers incapable of creating a downtown hub and the required tunnels, MDOT, in my opinion, should advocate for a metro agency with federal powers to do the heavy lifting. How that gets organized so close to DC is discussed in this chapter. But as preview, the case is stronger for Congress to form a regional prototype using federal authority that can be extended to Baltimore. (Baltimore and DC are about to become the third largest metropolitan Combined Statistical Area, passing Chicagoland which has twelve commuter lines. Hence, a DC metro needs to use their five lines much better.)

So Baltimore realistically could be included in the Capitol Region Transportation Authority (CRTA) which eventually also should include northern Virginia’s commuter line so that DCUS through-tracks create a unified network. Not only would this reduce Metro’s stress, but it would show America that multi-state dysfunction does not reign in the new metropolitan regime.

A further adaptation based on the lessons of the CRTA can take place at the other end of the NEC in Boston where its talking for two decades has yet to produce a unifying tunnel.

Despite being the city with the most innovative transportation alternatives in the nation’s most innovative state, San Francisco failed to tunnel train service downtown because, in the Big Picture, transit still suffers under laws that restrict it to second class.

This failure should tell every big city mayor nationwide that grandiose gateway plans must be proposed within a campaign for new laws that aim to rebalance regional transportation. Station upgrades can happen if supported by a political logic that runs like this: trains stimulate alternative networks that redevelop communities around transit so road congestion is reduced and so those taxpayers who must save money… can.

Related, SF’s failure results from over-reach. New central stations are too complex for mere powers of a municipality or joint powers board, no matter how competently they performed. Our transportation policy is rigged against SF’s Transbay Center having trains. Yet, it really is only a failure if we do not learn what no-trains-downtown teaches.

The learning spreads. If trains get equal status under law, SF solutions can be adapted so plans for LA and San Jose stations also progress faster… but only if solutions use the force of California law. When pressed, California has devolved some transportation authority to metros. Accelerating that process is simpler than we think; if we use for regional advantage the state’s mid-term fiscal weakness. With demonstrated benefits, SF’s central station is the prototype to guide sub-centers down the Caltrain Corridor all the way to San Jose.

That prototype gets accepted quicker if municipalities transcend their instinct to protect home rule from county and state-controlled regional agencies. And transcendence happens quicker if California makes governance of each metro’s transportation directly accountable to the property-owners and commuters who most benefit. Timid mayors cannot resist solutions. And California cannot stop the will of its three largest metros; all of whom have well-intentioned — and long-ignored — plans for evolving each’s regional transportation.

Such a Big Picture strategy only works if each station’s precise analysis gives California good reason for letting go faster of its authority and devolving it intelligently to metros. To start that process, immediately below is the high concept for each chapter. And below that, each is followed by their respective preview of 762, 562 and 530 words.

4) Transbay Center 2018: The Watershed Moment Regionalists Have Been Waiting For

5) Caltrain’s Corridor Commission: How To Stretch First Class Solutions All The Way To San Jose

6) LA Union Station: The Edifice Complex Makes Only A Little More Than A Make-over

These three chapters have been drafted (two are quite long); but need editing and peer review. Hopefully, all comes together to be posted by Summer 2018.

4) San Francisco’s Transbay Transit Center As A Transportation Watershed: Avoid The Pitfalls Of Value Capture (VC) by Making It Work Alongside People Power

As America’s foremost mid-sized transit metropolis, San Francisco already uses some “WST” innovations proposed for start-ups such as The Twin Cities or Denver. While SF will benefit from more advanced doses of some innovations, the proposal for SF is more transformative. It is even more likely; because California is, optimistically, mid-way in decentralizing its transportation authority. A good strategy pushes this further.

California role reduction explains the power of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s MPO, relative to other MPOs nationwide. The MTC can influence — and often control — most transit funding and bridge tolling. (The latter is an advantage similar to America’s greatest transit user, Manhattan.)

This does not mean the Bay Area’s authority is organized properly. If authority was coherent, it may have been possible to combine two politically separate sub-regions into the TTC. (They are primarily East Bay buses and trains from Silicon Valley.)

The SF central station’s first phase (a bus terminal just below the park rendered above) will be finished in early 2018. The second phase would have finished building Caltrain’s station two levels below ground at the end of a one mile tunnel from its 20th Century terminus.

While renderings are impressive, the TTC’s finance innovation depended on VC schemes with nearby new-built towers. (One is the Salesforce Tower that just bought TTC’s naming rights.) Far more impressive, the towers constitute a second downtown. Reflect on how this has not been accomplished since Grand Central Terminal’s mini-city was completed in Mid-town Manhattan almost nine decades ago. On the surface, this strikes me as the 21st Century’s greatest triumph of American TOD to date.

But instead of GCT’s staying power in which real estate and trains feed one another, the TTC’s trains cannot show up. Saddled with huge cost-overruns of a multi-layered deal with inadequate authority and accountability, SF cannot bring trains downtown; despite this being a priority for over a decade. Without fulfilling the promise of trains, many VC deals are falling short. Agencies operating under California’s Joint Powers Act cannot raise enough public capital, nor a sufficient revenue stream. This makes private partners wary. In terms of progress, trains jumped the track. How do we get them back on track ?

This chapter proposes a strong, sub-regional public authority to negotiate with and manage a private partner to figure how out a GCT-like dynamic today can finish the job. Re-organizing such an authority requires a state law that permits intense participation from landowners in SF, the suburban centers and all the way to San Jose.

The above map designed by SPUR, the Bay Area’s chief civic planning group, gives insight into a working strategy. Note that two purple Caltrain commuter rail lines do not connect to the transit-rich downtown and the BART subway. Also note the lighter purple line has only ten stops, including San Jose Diridon. This is Caltrain’s Baby Bullet; express trains serving mostly TOD suburban stations. Currently, there is no governing structure to help get any of the 24 other stations to build the TOD to generate the Value Capture subsidy required to support express service.

That is a key part of this political logic that needs to be worked through: those buildings that benefit the most from trains should pay their fair share. VC works this principle; albeit now flawed in its early stages.

The TTC funding gap can be closed by a series of economic incentives flexibly supervised by this new authority whose legitimacy and advocacy comes from an elected Board that represents districts based on proximity to train stops; using taxes layered by radiating ped-sheds at agreed upon intervals.

Try this high concept: Ped-Sheds Meet People Power.

This strategy avoids major political obstacles probably still lingering from five decades ago when south suburban counties excluded themselves from the BART system. This made Caltrain necessary. But now at capacity and stumped, the only clear path comes when California creates a metropolitan authority suitable to the tasks of train tunneling, highway pricing and overall mobility Corridor-rationalization that reduces road congestion economically.

Solving the TTC has two purposes. First, it proposes this prototype authority that also accelerates redeveloping centers in the Caltrain Corridor to pay for improved service. Instead of a sales tax increase that is hard to sell to narrow-minded folks, new funds come from increased ridership and VC schemes based on property value increases.

Second, this prototype proposal tests new authorities that, if they work, can be adapted and subsumed into a more orderly MTC… or a more comprehensive successor.

The proposal also sets up how to fathom the very fancy financing required for the second Transbay crossing. This the Bay Area must have operating in less than two decades. Currently, there is no chance of getting this necessity when one considers TTC’s tunnel is 80% shorter and cannot be completed despite being a priority since 2005.

5) Deal Details For The Caltrain Corridor: Extend Value Capture For The Network

In a Big Picture analysis, the above Google Map shows improbable bones to create a successful TOD for two major reasons.

First, downtown San Jose’s Diridon Station is hemmed by highways on two sides. This upsets a healthy urban fabric and explains how half of Diridon’s 1/4 mile ped-shed on three sides is under-utilized as surface parking. On the east, the highway separates the central station from the downtown; reducing chances of successfully extending it. West of the 1/4 mile shed, there is mostly single family homes. These characteristics of sprawl typically mitigate against a quick redevelopment into TOD.

Second, two miles north of Diridon is another hem from an expressway and a bigger subsidized infrastructure, an international airport. Federal flight clearance regulations limit Diridon’s surrounding tax base to mid-rise buildings. This reduces land values of what could be a skyscraper extension of a second downtown. By analogy… SF boosters said the TTC was needed to enhance SF’s status as a global center. So, Diridon’s placement in the middle of sprawl’s long-term investments can weaken San Jose boosters’ contention that they are the Bay Area’s other global center.

Negatives aside, there are at least three reasons to believe San Jose’s plans will produce fruit.

One reason is Google intends to buy most the parking lots and build a campus. Thus also by analogy, many of SF’s headaches can be avoided as there were too many owners around the TTC to construct a simple, lasting VC deal.

Third, the Peninsula suburbs, the South Bay and San Jose all have terrible traffic. Most the Caltrain Corridor will benefit from regulations using economics to rebalance car use.

However, these three favorable circumstances still may not make trains successful when the competition is as highly subsidized as are cars. The TTC also had favorable circumstances and its execution was competent; but, joint power boards lack authority. Unless an agency has the authority to resolve problems, they will restrict San Jose’s ambitions for the Diridon as the centerpiece of Google’s innovation campus.

This chapter takes the outline proposed in Chapter 4 and details the deal to replace the current Joint Powers regime (based on counties) and base it, instead, on the lands from SF to San Jose who most benefit from the trains. California’s incentive to decentralize further is that it must: only an elected Caltrain Corridor Commission can construct deals that reduce car congestion in ways that do not make voters really mad at the Assembly.

This chapter syncs the regional priority of trains entering the TTC with a regional deal for a transportation policy stretching to San Jose and using trains to redevelop in-between. This proposal is part of prototyping MTC into a comprehensive — fully elected —regional authority to shape a balanced transportation policy for cars and transit.

The Bay Area lessons can help the LA region; struggling to un-due its mid-century mistake of nearly killing transit and its current Century mistake of not un-doing the laws that treat the Car as if it always will be the American Dream. The lessons from urban SF to sprawling San Jose will serve as a blended prototype to be adapted to the diverse, gargantuan LA metropolis.

6) LA’s Transit Renaissance: Will It Be A Make-over ?

Since posting my 2014 hopeful review of Los Angeles Union Station (LAUS) as the anchor of LA’s transit renaissance, my enthusiasm is dampened by how the car culture resists competition from alternative mobility. Resistance to change explains delays in updating LAUS, its cost-overuns and tactical mistakes. Plans to make most tracks run-through were cut by two-thirds due to huge cost increases. There also are setbacks in turning the isolated LAUS into a destination… particularly disappointing because the municipality of LA controls its land use… or should.

Also reviewed in this chapter, commuter rail ridership has flat-lined while the region’s congestion worsens. Also confirming that people are still using their cars too much on shorter runs, five of eight of LA’s light rail lines have flat-lined relative to population growth.

Other evidence indicates the premise of LA’s transit Renaissance may sit on more sand than cement. While two-thirds of voters again approved a sales tax increase to build transit, other market research indicates swing voters intended that people with lower incomes should take transit and, thus, provide relief from road congestion. Clearly, “transit-gets-other-people-out-of-my-lane” is not a consensus that grows transit use. (Curiously, this attitude — with a little shrewdness — opens up the possibility for more user fees.)

Yet in the Big Picture, LA needs a strategy to un-do its role in making The American Dream prioritize the car… if LA is serious about a balanced transportation policy.

My quick review of LAUS is the #4 Quiz Answer. The Make-Over moniker is inevitable unless LA County figures out a new strategy to level the playing field with cars. My photo above is ARTIC, the Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center. Following in the ambitious planning footsteps of LAUS, ARTIC is southern California’s second great Edifice Complex. So dazzling is this station, that it took me a while to understand its fundamental flaws.

ARTIC bears spiritual resemblance to Disneyland, one of its four major nearby attractions. Gorgeous as ARTIC looks, it is poorly designed; adding to the growing evidence that the political appointees approving all this new transit infrastructure are as timid to explore 21st Century solutions as their political masters. I surmise that they hope a fanciful building or a new light rail line will help sustainable transportation emerge. Instead, Americans need to know the inconvenient truth about the un-affordability of the auto and the large lot suburban home for middle class families.

While professional politicians may shy from these emerging truths, their true job as leaders is to help build a new Dream for mobility. LAUS and ARTIC are the beginning metaphors to tell the new story of how sustainable transportation is more likely to emerge if cars are used less. At least, that is how my chapter treats them.

And of course, better targeted public funds must be found. While California’s new legislation for EIFDs (Enhanced Infrastructure Finance Districts) still needs changes to make it easier to capture value, these three chapters’ primary goal is to explore how to make sure there is proper authority to spend the new tax money wisely as possible.

Linking the TODs from San Francisco to San Jose can be a prototype so southern California’s Metrolink (service area above) connects TOD-enhanced downtowns from western-most San Bernardino through LAUS to Ventura and from Oceanside north through ARTIC to LAUS. Since Metrolink politically can’t do all that for those six diverse counties, at least a new authority for LA County starts the process of how trains help redevelop stations into multi-centers for mobility’s alternative order. Make half a dozen in LA County good enough. Then, other stations across the region cannot resist… or, at least, so goes the Hollywood script.

Previewed in February 2018: How Federal Policy Can Help Commuting Within The NEC. In the previous six chapters, agencies view Uncle Sam as a checkbook and Amtrak as, let’s say, less helpful. The federal government — and certainly the national railroad — must be the partner who helps metropolitan agencies succeed in using the most effective technology to move people across a metropolis. And together, they must act together to give taxpayers value for their investment. Recent trends for performance-based federal investments must be accelerated to utilize better how trains reduce car congestion.

The NEC also highlights how Uncle Sam’s updated use of the Constitution’s commerce clause should encourage economic growth within and between metros. These enhanced federal-metro powers should help trains get un-stuck from histories dominated now by poorly cooperating states. The focus for the remaining chapters is to propose solutions that convert legacy stations and systems into high capacity through-routes.

Summary of 3 Sections. If a central station has improved its connectivity and capacity, it usually tracks back to the region improving its governance. Briefly, here is the story of three stations that improved because the metro sought to progress beyond the bankrupt lines they inherited.

1. While Philadelphia’s three Center City stations (the nation’s only through-route) resulted more from municipal moxie, the region’s transit agency (SEPTA) moved out of caretaker mode in the early-1980s, made a few changes and was key to one of America’s most successful downtown redevelopments for older cities. Today, the region’s sub-centers can benefit from this key infrastructure if it is reorganized.

2. One of the Twin Cities has a new central station; the other beautifully restored its station. Since the 1970s, the governor-appointed Metropolitan Council served as MPO and transit operator. But, it became distrusted. So voters created county-appointed Boards to invest a new sales tax to fund the transit build-out. That change seems to have run its course and regional reforms are needed to advance transit.

3. Denver’s elected Regional Transit District (RTD) led a successful redevelopment of a historic station, an amazing urban repurposing of its train yard and a build-out of four new commuter lines. While the recession of 2009 nearly ended these plans, the RTD saved them by organizing some model PPPs (Public-Private Partnerships.)

Each story is detailed a bit in its respective mini-chapter below of 515, 496 and 712 words. In early 2018, each will have a lengthy article detailing further how the central station reflects the region’s governance and how each still can be improved.

The author took this east-west photo of the Center City model at Philadelphia’s Center for Architecture. The foreground begins the through-tunnel running under the main street. The SEPTA bi-color “S” approximates underground Jefferson Station, then midway is Suburban (also an “S”), then across the river is the 30th Street Station.

1) Philadelphia: Grow Your Assets From Good To Great

As the nation’s only commuter through-route, Philly figures prominently in November’s nutshell post of this “book.” Another reason is SEPTA runs probably the nation’s best suburban system and is the major factor in Center City’s success. (But, I mention its colonial-era bones are amazingly well-suited for redevelopment in the sustainable era.)

Completed in 1983, the Center City Commuter Connection (CCCC) is a mere 1/2 mile four-track tunnel that converted a 19th Century terminal into a through-station. This connected to Suburban Station and created the possibility of the nation’s first through-network; similar to those benefitting almost all major metros in Europe.

Arising from Suburban’s underground platforms you can see the 1930s east-west track crossing the bridge to the monumental 30th Street Station that terminates Center City’s main street. Since it already is a dual direction through-station (made by Amtrak’s north-south NEC), 30th Street will become the nation’s most effective large hub after the planned update resolves its connectivity problems.

For your background, the first article and scorecard of “The Urbanophile” series posted in September 2013 focusses on the CCCC. Since then, little has changed for trains. Then as now, SEPTA only uses its through-route at about half its potential peak capacity. Primarily used to bring suburbanites downtown, trains should instead be used to help build sub-regional centers and their TOD. For example, a very small percent of passengers use CCCC advantageously for non-Center City destinations.

My take-away from this link is SEPTA — without power or funds to design a modern system — resigned itself to the pre-CCCC pattern of radial lines terminating downtown … as designed for the late 19th Century by the Reading and Pennsylvania railroads.

SEPTA’s obstacles to 21st Century rail standards are many: inadequate regional authority, an unconcerned state, a train union that resists progress and chronic fiscal crises that have piled-up almost two decades of deferred maintenance.

But, Philly offers us an important lesson. Symbolically, CCCC connects at City Hall and was made possible by Mayor Rizzo’s political will. Long-term mayoral focus paid off as CCCC played a key role in one of America’s most successful downtown revitalizations. But relative to Philly’s high poverty rates in many neighborhoods, the next focus of political will should help trains redevelop sub-centers.

This chapter suggests how redeveloping 30th Street Station and its surrounds into an extension of Center City can lead to policies that transport people to other redeveloped sub-centers. More important, this chapter suggests how Center City needs Manhattan’s advantage of more easily levying higher bridge and tunnel fares to pay for maintenance. These and other car usage fees also increase train use and revenue.

Probably posted in March 2018, this chapter concludes with the website’s theme: the authority SEPTA lacks is common to other multi-state major Metros on the Northeast Corridor. Before they can change commuting patterns significantly, NEC metros also will benefit if their states devolve parts of transportation authority. Uncle Sam must encourage this while also setting a federal standard for funding regional trains that makes through-networks. This is explored further in Preview D for Chapters 4, 5 and 6.

The author’s photo of the light rail hub as a destination spot and Target Field. A minimal commuter rail station is on the other side of this light rail hub overpass.

In two decades, Minneapolis budded into a transit metropolis. Key is the above hub that repurposed an old warehouse district and rebuilt it into a mixed use neighborhood, an entertainment district that includes Target Field (where the Twins play) and the multi-purpose indoor Target Center. Supporting all this is transit and car infrastructure.

Continuing this display of nearly picture-perfect planning, a revitalized downtown is two stops away via light rail. So with sufficient evidence, The Metropolitan Council, the seven county planner and transit operator, boasts that the transit build-out has attracted private investment for TODs around the Target complex, in both downtowns and, increasingly, at other light rail stations.

Their transit network grew mostly after a new deal with taxpayers. Distrust with the governor-appointed Metro Council resulted in five counties forming the County Transit Improvement Board (CTIB) whose job was to invest a 2008 sales tax for transit.

Recently, CTIB dissolved as a Joint Powers Board. Two counties composed by the Twin Cities and inner suburbs are moving forward with fewer restraints. They have increased their sales tax to continue the build-out. With CTIB’s other three counties in a muddle, events support the “WST” theme that county-based agencies do not satisfy taxpayers that live further from transit and that property-based revenue helps strike a better deal.

Other signs indicate the CTIB could not step-up to a sustainable strategy. The newest light rail line is unexpectedly slow in connecting the Minneapolis hub to the restored St. Paul Union Depot. (While St. Paul’s downtown also has revitalized, its improvements are less impressive and its transit use has grown slower than its Twin.) With the light rail network’s build-out completed, ridership grew… but now seems stable relative to the metro’s growth. The only commuter rail line stayed under 3,000 daily riders for its first decade. (A consensus is the line does not extend to the major sub-regional center of St. Cloud because its rural county did not join the CTIB.)

This chapter argues that while the Twin Cities competently laid track, current agencies cannot deliver an economic alternative to the car. Often suffering dysfunction caused by an otherwise rural state running more interference than is healthy, the Twin Cities are at a pivot point about how restructuring governance can take transit to the next level.

This chapter proposes moving authority away from appointed officials and county-based councils, which includes rail authorities. Instead, elect a Board to head an authority that also gets advocacy powers for overall transportation policy (gasoline taxes, leveling the subsidy field and redeveloping greater TOD as transit’s new tax base.)

Such ideas are further developed in the chapters covering the innovations being tested in Denver and the Bay Area.

Photo courtesy of Denver Infill. Visit their blog entry to see how this nearly vacant train yard transformed from 4 years ago into the mini-city above.

3) Denver Union Station: Why Elections Matter

By the standards of mid-sized and large American cities, Denver’s transit transformation has no rivals… certainly for speed and completeness and likely regional complement by its growing Transit Oriented Development. Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) has two strategic innovations: its elected Board and PPPs. Both help explain its rapid ascent as a transit metropolis that aspiring metros should consider.

First, the RTD’s Public Private Partnerships worked as well as could be hoped for. They leveraged public money to attract sufficient private borrowings to restart the build-out. PPP efficiencies also sped-up the remake of Denver Union Station into a destination, its surroundings into a successful mixed use neighborhood and a dedicated line to the airport into a success that shines compared to the troubled efforts of far larger metros.

Using public capital generated from a 2004 sales tax initiative (called FasTracks), the RTD started construction of its rail networks. But, huge cost-over-runs emerged. Worsened by reduced sales tax revenue from the 2008 recession, FasTracks faced stoppage and would lose credibility with taxpayers. So with elections holding representatives accountable, RTD structured PPPs to resume the build-out. An added public benefit was private partners held to budgets noticeably better than the RTD had when it managed construction.

Denver is widely regarded as turning its derelict station into a model transportation hub. Capping this consensus in 2015, Denver Union Station (DUS) received the prestigious Global Award for Excellence from The Urban Land Institute. ULI’s Award noted how well DUS, RTD and resulting PPPs were converting 22 acres of rail-yards and an under-utilized warehouse district into a mixed-use extension of the downtown.

During 2017, Denver’s four light rail lines were joined by DUS’ third commuter line. The looming 2008 failure has been turned into a network; all guided by RTD’s elected Board. While it is too soon to tell if enough metro taxpayers will get out of their cars and take advantage of transit by becoming regular passengers, this chapter speculates that RTD’s next strategic innovation is to advocate for complete transportation policies.

On the finance side, it also is too soon to tell if the RTD’s performance is good enough to change the bond market’s lack of trust in tax increment and Value Capture deals. While still needing to test transit’s help to moderate future real estate slow-downs, Denver is, for now, a boom-town once again. But if the RTD can lead Denver through the 2008 real estate depression, it probably has the metro-moxie to work through future recessions.

All of which makes me pine for an answer: “How do they do that?”

I add this question because some of Denver’s success defies logical explanation. If electing a transit Board actually turns them into risk-takers and problem-solvers, why do legislative elections continue to produce such terrible results nationwide?

Part of the answer is Colorado is known as a “good government” state that delivers results. For the metro’s RTD, voters apparently elected clean politicians who used campaigns to discuss transportation issues instead of legislators using campaigns as opportunities for wanton character assassination. Carrying problem-solving into office, RTD’s Board “thought outside the box” to deliver an alternative network.

As agencies nationwide fumble to develop alternative delivery methods and PPPs, the RTD’s unprecedented performance lends credence to the emerging maxim: “when private capital is involved, better decisions are made with public funds.” To extend that maxim, other states should establish metro agencies with clean elections that reinforce a new deal with taxpayers and deliver 21st Century networks.

Preview For Multi-Metros. Besides being Colorado’s economic engine, Denver also is its Capitol. Thus, the RTD’s authority to innovate could be monitored closely. But, multi-metro states have a different dynamic and need a different model for devolving state authority. For that, we next analyze how metropolitan transit is evolving in California. Because major stations are struggling for their new life in the Bay Area and LA regions, Preview D looks at how California can devolve authority faster… with possible applications in more multi-metro states such as Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida.

As one of the best tools to cope with urban congestion, commuter train modernization is accelerating worldwide… except in the U.S. As the key infrastructure showcasing its industrial might in this century, China’s inter-city trains soon will rival Japan’s. Curiously, Japan’s commuter rail remains the world leader for five decades because the rail companies frequently owned the land around the stations. This synergy is what the U.S. has lost and restricts our urban redevelopment.

By modernizing policy, Europe largely has modernized its regional mobility. Their decades-proven formula starts by updating stations into destinations or malls, converts terminals into through-stations, redevelops nearby buildings and, as ridership grows, improving frequency and the quality of trainsets. Showing healthy transportation economics, most of these countries subsidize the car less and charge it higher user fees than the U.S.

Attention to policy pays off. For example, this assertive pattern modernized Paris regional trains so much that they have 712% more passengers than similar-sized Chicagoland, the U.S. rail center and annual contender for America’s largest commuter system… but whose ridership growth is stagnant relative to population growth.

Explanation? Starting in 1969 and finishing by 1982, Paris’ system tunneled under four of its six terminals, converting them into through-stations while making seven new stations. All these assets were combined into one regional network that served to re-generate the inner-city and reduce stresses on the subway and surface streets.

As contrast, Chicago in 1984 started talking about connecting two terminals. Since then, we’ve spent lots renovating terminals, but built zero new inner-city stations. While lacking the authority of law, a 2010 consensus Plan at least made a top regional priority of converting two adjacent terminals into through-stations. While Europeans know they can do this, no Chicagoans I know honestly believe there are funds for this game- changing tunnel … despite it being short and offering a high return on public investment.

Paris achieved in 13 years what Chicagoland officials only could talk about for 33. And what is the cost of talk? A Paris-quality train modernization is required for Chicagoland to compete in the global era. Only now, those mobility efficiencies will require the metro to invest at least twice as much in real dollars as Paris did.

While Chicagoland’s backwardness may seem extreme, it describes the U.S. pattern of almost no progress. Progress is prevented by governments we keep supporting. But, they no longer support us. The longer we wait to fix our trains, the more expensive the fix. Trains remain our leading technological antidote to regional car congestion.

We start with the positives. Americans are good at redeveloping property near stations. Chicago, Boston, DC, San Francisco and Manhattan’s Westside are all improving real estate within walking distance of their central terminals. Many are magnificent buildings that help shape desirable urban settings. All these talents need to be applied to redevelop sub-regional centers.

However if we analyze why those talents spread too slowly, we can accelerate sub-center regeneration. Progress in urban real estate is rarely served by transit adequate enough for smart growth. Improving transit is secondary and, typically, gets sacrificed from plans. Agencies often neglect to improve — and probably cannot improve adequately — their transit networks. Central terminals remain so. Capacity does not keep pace with growth. Car congestion in the downtown — and the roads leading there — persists.

So to advance this essay, let’s cut-to-the-chase and ask this question. Since their purpose is to serve as a transportation hub, why can’t American terminals convert to the 21st Century standard of a through-station?

You know the answer: Mayors control land use and do so to gain their cities short-term revenue by improving buildings near stations. Yet, urban mayors cannot modernize train networks to increase capacity and, thus, cannot redevelop network sub-centers or their potential long-term tax revenue. And why can Europe? Because one agency typically has superior authority; guiding other agencies to work in synergy.

Thus trains, one of our best technologies to decrease highway and subway congestion is under-utilized. Also lost is a key tool to increase value in the network’s sub-centers.

How to utilize trains better is a theme of “What Stations Teach.” To organize this nutshell, Preview B has a first grouping that includes the transit start-ups of the Twin Cities, Denver, San Jose and LA. All impressively are improving real estate around their station. But with too little transit at the end of the 20th Century, these cities struggle to improve transit service enough to get commuters out of their cars.

The key question revolves around economic incentives: how can a region invest new capital smarter so its trains gain enough market share to reduce car congestion?

More and more advocates argue this answer: if transit were funded more by car usage fees and, thus, leveled the subsidy playing field, then commuters would take transit. Our charge: rebalance the economic incentives.

Intuitively, many also know this sustainable transportation “formula” has the same strategic solution: move toward a regional governance that increases transit effectiveness by increasing usage fees until congestion is tolerable.

This discussion now involves the above hopeful image. Compared to other plans, The 30th Street Station Plan will become more fact than fiction. The reason is simple:

Philly’s 30th Street is one of about ten dual through-stations in the western world and the only one in North America. Hence, global capital will flock to invest in its surrounding real estate. (Dual through-stations have north-south and east-west through-routes.)

While it will have real estate success, 30th Street teaches us key factors in improving regional transportation.

In The Big Picture, clear majorities of American urban dwellers want car congestion reduced. Yet, Philly’s 26% who take transit to work has hovered around that for two Census. Why? Well… Philly’s metro has not changed how it uses trains to get its taxpayers to work. Without an increase in regional authority, the 30th Street “Plan” is mostly likely to bring far more cars to what is now an extension of Philly’s Center City.

So… even America’s only through-station will not reduce congestion because the Philly metro lacks proper authority to develop economic incentives to reduce car usage.

So goes the story with stations in the next five chapters. Similar to 30th Street, they had under-utilized rail yards and rebuilt them as mixed use developments that extend the urban core. And all have a marginal reduction in road congestion because a big city mayor cannot make the most effective changes in overall transportation policy.

Daily road congestion is our best strategic case for metropolitan government. (Stormwater is the emergency case.) Excessive traffic wastes more time and money than any daily household item when considering that cars depreciate quickly. Most citizens fuming-in-traffic intuitively know this failure of self-government. But, poorly presented solutions are either too long-term (sprawl takes decades to reverse) or seem like a sacrifice (use the car less.)

Hence, the best way to explain how to reorganize transportation authority is to analyze the continuing frustrations to modernize the connectivity and capacity of central stations. Terminals are our brick-and-mortar microcosms to redo the pieces of daily transportation so we unclog roads and raise household savings.

These microcosms help us put the pieces back together. A proper through-station is the engineer’s prototype to test greater capacity. It also is the reformers’ example of how to change backward commuting behavior. As a multi-benefit response to the increasingly posed equity equation, trains save households money and redevelop sub-centers.

As we build momentum to break out of transportation’s late 20th Century spider-web, the most hopeful lessons in evolving metropolitan policy come from our modest successes in station updates. Where those systems converge, we create mode synergy that spreads. From the coming six chapters, this Preview cites some central station positives and also details how to modernize each system so it also redevelops sub-regional TOD.

The Nutshell Version Of The 6 Chapters On Stations That Are Changing… And How They Can Help Us Right-size Transportation Authority From States To Metros

For those who only have time for the double-short version, here are how the next six chapters illustrate the problems and solutions to evolve metropolitan transportation.

1) Philadelphia Center City through-stations were made mostly by municipal moxie. Center City redeveloped robustly near those three stations whose location is obvious in the above photo. Conversely obvious, sub-regional centers have benefited little from rails; despite there being 147 other stations. Ridership is only 10% above 1970s levels during bankruptcy. Pennsylvania’s legislature has been increasingly hostile to Philly utilizing its train tools. Lesson: the benefits of a through-system don’t grow unless the state allows the system to modernize and redevelop sub-regional centers.

2) The Twin Cities represent American metros’ most common pattern. This county-based transit build-out is analyzed to see how they and others can evolve. Having harvested the low-hanging fruit of a new network and two central stations, Twin Cities transit has clear growth limits (particularly for trains) under the current multi-county, legislative-meddled, governor-appointed regional council. Lesson: metro governance needs broader authority created by more democracy.

3) The antidote is obvious in Denver’s elected Regional Transportation District. The RTD produced the nation’s best transit progress recently. But one decade ago, it was stuck in a fiscal crisis that would have killed the promise of trains. So this Board, accountable to taxpayers, innovated and opened four commuter lines. The airport line exceeded goals in its first year; pleasing passengers and private partners. They rapidly are transforming around Union Station and a few suburban stops. Lesson: more democracy yields transportation progress, prosperity and property tax revenue.

4) SF’s failure to bring trains downtown proves only metro authority can improve trains significantly. While the San Francisco Bay Area (above) has our best transit west of Manhattan, Caltrain failed to achieve this regional priority of connecting downtown SF to the Silicon Valley. SF also represents the nation’s fumbling trend to fund transit by collecting from landowners who benefit most (called Value Capture or VC.) SF offers a cautionary tale to every city that VC cannot replace significant public capital unless this new tax is legitimized by effective, re-structured agencies.

5) Making VC work for SF is part of a new deal for the Caltrain Corridor. While suburban TOD has grown and San Jose’s Google campus could be a breakthrough, the real opportunity is to reorganize the Corridor’s transportation so it is as intelligent as the industries it serves. To avoid the county-based resistance, this proposal is corridor-based and encourages PPPs to redevelop the corridor and grow ridership.

6) The LA region struggles to use rails to reduce car congestion. While California’s devolution of authority happens faster in its north, LA has great potential to use trains as a mobility alternative in America’s most sprawled metropolis. This requires getting past the region’s Edifice Complex for central stations and resetting transportation economics so commuters use cars less. This chapter proposes California’s further devolution and gives multi-metro states — such as Texas and Florida — a hopeful prototype.

To conclude these six chapters, transportation authority can rebalance from states to metros. By analogy, we have precedent for states creating authority at lower levels. When rapid industrialization required giving municipalities authority to segregate uses, 1926 documents show this emanated from Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover and spread quickly as a ‘de facto’ federal policy. While this was consensus for the 20th Century, our unintended consequences today of segregated uses is they add to unnecessary congestion. Until mixed uses start to become a suburban norm (which will take many decades), trains can relieve road-stress in the short-term and accelerate mixed-use suburban centers in the mid-term. And all this gets sped-up if federal policy helps devolve state power to shape an elected metropolitan body politic for transportation as a test to solve these entrenched problems. The NEC is ripe for that test.

How Stations That Are Not Changing Can Be Used To Help Rearrange Authority Within States And Between States (Chapters 7 to 12)

Updating Uncle Sam’s funding incentives could give sufficient guidance so legacy trains are modernized for this era. Federal grants could be contingent on transferring state authority to an elected metropolitan council which, in turn, can tax to pay for the huge backlog for a “state of good repair” and, then, real improvements.

To create leverage against state resistance, Uncle Sam also needs to prevent states from interfering with national priorities. His role as interstate coordinator emerges in Chapters 7 to 11 with a more detailed proposal in Chapter 12. (For your reading convenience, this proposal first is summarized in Preview E which focuses on solving the common problems of Amtrak and commuter legacy rails.)

Particularly important in today’s policy discussions are the “privatization” of Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor (its map above.) Covered in Chapters 7 to 10, the NEC’s key stations also center major commuter lines. Integrating both services in those stations realistically has become an equal national necessity. As public assets, these stations must be invested in as part of the NEC’s privatization deal. Preview E and chapters 7 to 10 will suggest how both can take place concurrently. (Inside note: This “privatization” proposal is unlikely to be good policy for the public or private interests unless this new policy also levels the subsidy playing field by charging higher intercity car tolls and flight fees.)

In each remaining station’s chapter, our goal is to expand the policy discussion and remind Congress that commuters are the primary passengers in the same stations the NEC uses. And whether or not Congress permits the deal to privatize NEC operations, commuters still need a new deal so multi-state metros can reorganize trains and use them properly to move the nation forward for the coming era.

7) DC Union Station can send this message: dysfunction does not reign. To reorganize this multi-state metro and utilize one of the best methods to reduce stress on its subway, this chapter proposes a Capital Region Transportation Authority. CRTA’s focus is strategic investments. One connects Maryland’s commuter system to Virginia’s by converting DCUS into a through-station.

8) Baltimore’s Penn Station does not serve this struggling downtown; but it can get service. By extending the CRTA, our proposal gives Baltimore and the NEC what they need: a passenger tunnel downtown that also fixes the NEC bottle-neck. This CRTA extension also becomes a modular prototype to extend the CRTA south to Richmond and, in this season of hope, re-unite the nation’s two halves !

9) Boston suffers Big Dig-phobia. Uncle Sam should help dig the tunnel to convert Boston terminals into through-stations and make New England’s true transit hub. Massachusetts apparently lacks the political authority for a multi-decade integration of the commuter network.

10) NYC’s “new” Penn Station is a terminal and will do little to increase capacity. Dysfunction imposed by state agencies not only has hugely endangered the region’s economy with probable tunnel failure, the failure to convert Penn to a through-station also causes Grand Central Terminal’s capacity to be underutilized. Thus, our proposal uses Uncle Sam to do what advocates have talked about for decades; but, have not got government to respond. Congress should help set up a regional authority to make two tunnels through Manhattan proposed by advocates. First, the new Gateway should be extended to Grand Central and, then, to Jamaica. Second, Atlantic Terminal should be connected to downtown Brooklyn, then lower Manhattan/Fulton and on to Newark. This will relieve stress on Manhattan’s congested subways and network several sub-regional centers.

11) My native Chicagoland gets the most radical proposal. Because its state is broke, discredited, endlessly corrupted and has breached so badly the social contract, this requires a federal takeover of metropolitan trains that, then, sets up an authority called TRIB, the Taxpayers Regional Investment Board. One of TRIB’s jobs will connect three of the above terminals with twelve lines into one network that increases train capacity, reduces Chicagoland’s persistent car congestion, redevelops lagging sections of Cook County, connects the region’s six airports and, generally, modernizes commuter service to the point that the nation’s freight rail center can truly say that it knows how to treat its taxpayers and passengers better than cattle.

Because Illinois has too long assumed its taxpayers are willingly pliant, its recurring fiscal emergencies are really the result of a latent tax strike. To end that strike, the legislature will have to make the TRIB an elected authority.

12) What is Uncle Sam’s Big Picture? Try this analogy. Possibly The Union’s greatest feel-good moment after the Civil War and lasting into the 20th Century was Uncle Sam’s stimulant that laid transcontinental rails (see commemorative stamp below.) This served us hugely well through the 1940s and, then, declined precipitously in the auto age.

As we seek efficient ways to move people through a metro, today’s rail stimulant will use trains to help re-organize regional mobility. But, our regime of 50 state DOTs interferes with national progress. Sustainable mobility will always fall short if metros cannot employ its public or private sector to run trains to reduce congestion. As part of a reconstructed American Deal, mobility also needs to help families grow savings since many increasingly can no longer afford multiple cars and large lot homes. Within our nation’s principles, we can meld entrepreneurial solutions so trains redevelop TOD, help diversify mobility alternatives and reverse economic decline in too many households.

But to achieve these ambitious goals and shape elected metropolitan agencies that can evolve sustainable transportation, Uncle Sam must help rearrange the “pecking” order (see October post) of agricultural era governments and minimize interference by states and their surrogate counties. Uncle Sam’s first steps are MPO reform and performance-based capital funding; both talked about, but barely starting. Next steps are detailed in #12.

Furthermore, #12 suggests how the constitutional commerce clause can help shape multi-state authorities for the metros along the NEC. And if that works, then adapt those authorities to remake Chicagoland’s radiant lines into a network of sub-centers.

Odd, isn’t it… that the 19th Century technology that wove states into a national economic unit can now be used to rationalize metros into units for the global economy.

Introduction to the Preview of the 12 Chapters of “What Stations Teach”

We have a pecking dis-order.

Lacking modern federal standards, commuter trains are unlikely to reduce congestion caused by single occupant cars. Further blocking commuters from their desire to waste less time in traffic, most of our fifty states have not delegated transportation and taxing authority to the most effective level. With states poorly suited to solve metro problems and failing to delegate effective regional authority, train service and congestion worsens.

Instead of adjusting authority for the future, most states still delegate transportation to 3,042 counties (pictured above, a level of government designed for when horses were the primary transportation helping Americans settle just-platted farmland). Yet today, 81% of Americans live in urban areas. While most transit subsidy comes from a county-wide sales tax, people increasingly know the properties that benefit most are those near transit and, to be fair, should pay more. This sales tax misfit multiplies when considering that under 2% of counties have 10% of residents regularly using transit to get to work. The other 90% pay for transit they may never use.

Thus, transit is “for other people.” This deeply ingrained attitude in the American mind makes it a low-priority service. In an era of chronic fiscal un-sustainability, transit loses. Since trains serve mostly suburban areas, they lose even more at perennial budget crunch-time. They also lose their best redevelopment tool.

This is a lousy deal for almost everyone.

Compounding these poor politics, a legal mismatch traps transit in its muddle. States and counties, in turn, expect 19,429 municipalities (most with true authority over only their streets) to take increasing responsibility for central stations… despite being regional infrastructure and, in several cases, having national significance. Hence after several decades of talk about updating Manhattan’s Penn Station, it may get a new concourse by 2025; but it still will be a terminal… and not the more efficient, higher-capacity through-station standard most European regions have converted to.

The 20th Century’s twenty-five or so years that we lost to the competition in the European Community have added another twenty-five years in this Century.

America’s pecking dis-order underlays the ten metros analyzed on this website and explains why trains transport taxpayers no differently than half a century ago. Central stations are the venue to understand this. They also are one of the most convenient synergies between environmental and fiscal sustainability. The Force is with stations.

If we want trains as a regional service to reduce congestion and transportation costs, we start by re-organizing government so it can modernize central stations. Since more train commuters will use a station that works better, these changes make it more likely the rest of the system can modernize. The modern central station comes first. Without that, today’s pecking dis-order will continue frustrating the good intentions of most mayors and civic leaders… as it has for most of this century.

So…let’s make every station update as part of converting today’s lousy deal into one that almost everyone wants.

The Strategic Perspective And Solutions Proposed In “What Stations Teach”

Transit’s misplaced authority fits the historical framework proposed in how stations evolved (recall the first 3Ms, Marvels, Mix-ups, Make-overs). As the 21st Century progresses, the 4th M (Masters of transportation) will emerge… but only if regional policies sync the benefits of transit with the people and properties that benefit most.

In the second chapter, we explored the key issues in improving central stations and network effectiveness. That Overview explains how regional governance and good real estate deals are two keys that must work together. While most central station real estate is improving because mayors marshall land use authority, rail service still worsens and, eventually, limits redevelopment downtown and in sub-regional centers.

In this third posting, I introduce how the Big Picture evolution needs to develop specific strategies to prepare for the very difficult process of rearranging authority so regional transportation gets governed well.

Following this Introduction, two more Preview posts summarize each station’s stymied condition as a result of its region’s mis-governance. (If you can’t wait for November, see the right hand column’s Table of Contents.)

Common problems and their four strategies are summarized below. I also cite the station mostly likely to solve this problem so we make governance work.

To improve commuter trains as regional assets, the key is converting terminals to through-stations. This maximizes passenger through-put and helps redevelop regional and sub-regional centers around stops that participate; thus increasing fares and tax revenues. Philadelphia is America’s only through-route. But, it does not maximize the asset. A comprehensive regional authority is proposed to help Philly and, we hope, other rail networks become a tool to generate more property revenue.

To make Value Capture work as a long-term source to pay bonds, stabilizing transit’s revenue must come from the region’s TODs and not just a county-wide sales tax. San Francisco is the biggest attempt to gather VC from land with multiple owners. But it failed to bring trains downtown; causing many VC deals to fall short. We propose a strategy that can finish the downtown train station as a regional asset.

To control costs using alternative delivery methods, Boards must be held accountable. In 2009 and facing elections in which they appeared to have broken their promise of new commuter lines centered on Union Station, Board members of Denver’s Regional Transportation District (RTD) set up a new private scheme to share the benefits of transit and to control costs.

To compensate for state negligence in funding and supervision of this vital public service, Uncle Sam must help regions reorganize transportation governance. Regional authority, frankly, is needed to through-route the two stations most desperate for it: New York’s Penn and Chicago’s Union. Starting by strengthening MPOs’ planning, federal funding and standards ultimately must transfer commuting authority to a regionally elected Board. This transfer of power to taxpayers is proposed in the culminating chapter exploring steps that federal policy must take.

How Metros Are Ending Our Pecking Dis-order… And How Uncle Sam Should Help

The Preview of Where Stations Improve. To make it easier, political evolution needs a portfolio of proof positives showing how change works. Our portfolio for commuter trains starts with the three Philadelphia Center City through-stations made in 1983. Produced mostly by municipal moxie, this lesson from the nation’s only through-route is it helped redevelop Center City well. But, other parts of the region largely has not utilized this. Sub-regional centers benefit more only if trains are governed as a metropolitan asset.

Following Philly, our second chapter contrasts the successful transit build-out in the Twin Cities with its limits imposed by a county-based, state-controlled, governor-appointed regional council. An antidote is obvious in the next chapter where Denver’s elected RTD has produced the nation’s best transit progress in the past decade.

If authority has two-sides of the same coin of the realm (regulatory law and tax law), the next two chapters address the nation’s fumbled trend to fund transit by collecting from landowners who benefit most. San Francisco’s failure to bring trains downtown indicates further that only metropolitan authority can improve train service significantly. Essentially, a new deal is proposed to involve SF’s southern suburbs and San Jose.

While California’s devolution of authority makes this possible in the north, LA still struggles to use rails to reduce road congestion. The proposal for LA to accelerate California’s devolution also gives other multi-metro states — such as Texas and Florida — a hopeful prototype.

The Preview of Where Stations Don’t Improve. In all the above chapters, a modern federal standard for investing tax dollars will certainly help metros minimize how much they repeat similar mistakes. But, federal authority also must help organize metropolitan authority. The best place to start is in the Federal District and its poor coordination with suburbs in two states, particularly as they converge on Union Station. Our proposal here for using Uncle Sam to establish the District’s metropolitan governance. Then, this can be used more easily in cities such as Baltimore and Boston whose state DOTs, while better than most, still cannot build what both cities need; downtown tunneled through-routes.

Finally, there is the crisis of America’s biggest and most poorly integrated systems. The New York region and Chicagoland operate the nation’s four largest systems and serve over 1.45 million taxpayers daily in which nearly 50% go through 4 central terminals. Compare only these two regions’ commuters to the 1.72 million who take domestic flights daily from the nation’s 5,194 airports. Compare this to how fully funded airports are by the federal government and its high standard.

Clearly, even a modest federal rail standard would have a significant impact. Even modest federal help in reorganizing authority between states (particularly New York and New Jersey) and within them (particularly Illinois) would have a significant impact in correcting our busiest and worst stations.

After all eleven chapters on metros are posted and you have critiqued their proposals, all these issues are brought together in a summary chapter that details a proactive role for Uncle Sam, as The Daddy, who makes sure that commuters doing-the-right-thing get rewarded with better service.

The new deal for 21st Century metropolitan transportation gets forged long-term within the timeless principles of American politics that were applied in Uncle Sam’s other major mid-century intervention: the standardization of federal roads using the gasoline tax.

These road policies that accompanied the New Deal were, in the 1950s, expanded and institutionalized in the Interstate system. The naysayers arguing the “states rights” position were proven wrong. Uncle Sam served to set the standard and organized the gas tax and, thus, helped every level of government build what was the greatest infrastructure network of the 20th Century.

This website’s goal is to suggest how the principles that worked, then, can be updated to solve the issues posed in the cartoon above. Always, states will suspect Uncle Sam of taking money. So, our focus is to demonstrate how modern metropolitan authority can solve problems of transporting taxpayers to work. To achieve this, we redefine Uncle Sam’s job as providing some venture capital and, equally important, the knowledge of what works so every region that wants to improve its trains can do so cost-effectively.

The next generation of policy will detail Uncle Sam’s role in promoting sustainable surface transportation. While federal funding might shrink more, that shirk of federal responsibility must be compensated with metros receiving proper taxing authority — derived mostly from states and counties — so that regional rail can be modernized enough to compete with cars.

Most of these chapters that post in 2018 will help us see how an effective rearrangement of authority stimulates solutions; including alternative delivery.

To reiterate future postings … November’s installment begins that long track of rearranging authority by previewing our portfolio of progress… and pitfalls.

Philadelphia is America’s only through-route, but still needs to maximize it.

The Twin Cities have a county-based build-out, but trains barely change habits.

Denver’s region-based build-out has a better chance.

With a more complete transportation authority, the Bay Area may be the first to make Value Capture work as a sub-regional tool.

And, Los Angeles may be the first sprawling metropolis to figure out a new deal so enough commuters use transit.

While states giving proper authority to metros is a principle that will produce the above progress, Uncle Sam still must guide it. The third and final Preview (posts in December) summarizes the four remaining metros in the NEC (DC, Baltimore, New York and Boston) and the western-most legacy systems of Chicagoland.

Uncle Sam’s role is fundamental in reshaping 20th Century transportation habits. In fact, there is little hope for those legacy systems being brought into the 21st Century without new federal laws that empower regions and improve their learning curve while reducing their cost curve.

Like the 20th Century’s gas tax, Value Capture schemes may mature into transportation’s 21st Century cash cow. It all depends on whether we rearrange our governments to work together to serve us as the U.S.